Mais, S. P. B. — Als to Geoffrey Robinson

Leicestershire, December 31, 1964. 2 pp. Stuart Petre Brodie Mais lived from 1885 to 1975. His wireless broadcasts for the BBC in the 1920s, 1930s and especially the wartime years of the 1940s, made him one of the most famous men in England, his peremptory but mellow, sergeant-majorly voice betraying a mixed heritage. In the same way that J. B. Priestley and Wilfred Pickles became household names, so S. P. B. or "Petre" as he preferred to be called, was, at the height of his broadcasting career, receiving 400-500 letters a day from listeners all over Britain, as his Kitchen Front (which was supported by the Ministry of Food and occasionally featured a promising young cookery writer called Marguerite Patten) and Microphone at Large programmes gained huge audiences in the dark days of the early 1940s, broadcasting from studios in Oxford Street at the height of the Blitz to tell the United States and England's dominions how the mother country was still in the fray and beating Hitler. With tape residue along left front margin. From a collection of letters and papers amassed by illustrator and painter Geoffrey Robinson during his years as a publisher with Rockliff, John Baker, Maclaren, et al. .